Tacoma’s rowdy roller derby team makes a valiant return this weekend — with a new name
For Aashiyana Koreishi, the allure was straightforward. She considers herself an athlete. Always has.
In college, Koreishi played soccer and lacrosse. She fed off the competition and the camaraderie. She craved the action.
In 2014, Koreishi moved to Tacoma. In real life, she’s a pathologist, working primarily at St. Joseph Medical Center on Hilltop.
On the roller derby track — where she found herself not long after moving to the City of Destiny, joining the ranks of Tacoma’s “premier roller derby team,” then known as the Dockyard Derby Dames — Koreishi now goes by Bones, which is fitting, given her line of work.
“I love skulls and bones and all of that sort of stuff,” Koreishi said when asked about her athletic alter-ego, which includes wearing the number 206 during competition, a reference to the number of bones in the human body — not the area code up north.
“It’s funny: a lot of people say derby finds you when you need it the most, and it’s sort of true,” the 49-year-old said.
We spoke on Monday, less than a week before her roller derby team’s first home bout since before the pandemic, on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 5 p.m. at the Pierce College Health Education Center in Lakewood, near Fort Steilacoom. They’re calling the event Dockyard Rises from the Dead.
Koreishi described the upcoming matchup with Spokane’s Lilac City roller derby crew — and, even more, the return Dockyard Derby home bouts — as “super-exciting,” for good reason.
“Once COVID hit, we stopped,” Koreishi told me, explaining that a number of skaters left the team during what turned into a lengthy disruption, exacerbated by challenges finding a facility to hold practices.
”But there was a good core of people that really took the lead and kind of kept totally going throughout,” she continued. “We kept pushing. … and it’s great for all of us skaters, volunteers and officials, and also for the community. We have a pretty great fan base, and you can see that by their enthusiasm.”
The team now practices once a week at Skateworld Tacoma, Koreishi said, and has been scrimmaging and competing in away bouts since earlier this year.
Saturday’s bout won’t just mark the return of local roller derby for the first time since early 2020, Koreishi explained.
It also will represent a new beginning for Tacoma’s beloved roller derby squad, which dates back to 2005 and has long been a positive influence in the area, including through its support of local nonprofits and charities.
Recently, team members decided to ditch the “Dames” in the official moniker, part of an effort to be more inclusive, according to Mary Krauszer, who has been involved with Tacoma roller derby for nearly a decade.
The squad — and the roughly 50 skaters who fill its ranks — has rebranded as Dockyard Roller Derby, a less gendered and more direct name, she explained, and one that better represents the team’s values.
“Across our membership, I think people approved of the name change for different reasons,” said Krauszer, 33, who’s known as Nine Inch Snails on the track and works in environmental conservation during the day.
“As someone who kind of helped to instigate it … I saw this as part of a broader movement across roller derby. Lots of other leagues and teams are moving away from gendered language, for the purpose of being inclusive and making sure we’re not being disrespectful,” Krauszer said.
“I don’t think dames was necessarily a disrespectful word, but I never felt like a dame,” she added.
Whatever you call it, there’s no doubt Tacoma’s Dockyard Roller Derby includes a diverse mix of committed local athletes — of various skills, ages and experience levels.
For the uninitiated — or anyone who forgot about Tacoma roller derby after the pandemic shut it down — here are the basics:
Today, Dockyard Roller Derby consists of two teams. There’s Wave of Mutilation, the club’s “all star team,” which consists of 20 skaters and competes in sanctioned Women’s Flat Track Derby Association bouts against the likes of Portland’s vaunted Rose City Rollers and Seattle’s Rat City Roller Derby. Undertow is Dockyard’s B Team of less advanced but equally fierce skaters. Saturday’s bout at Pierce College will be a doubleheader, with both squads in action.
For spectators, the action can be difficult to make sense of, at least at first. Five players from each team — four on defense, and one each on offense — face off on the track, competing in what are known as “jams.” There are two 30-minute halves in a bout, and multiple fast-paced jams, which are capped at two minutes.
To score points, the opposing players on offense — called jammers and designated with a star on their helmet — must successfully make it past the scrum of defensive players. Roller derby defense consists of trying to block the opposing team’s jammer from getting through.
The first jammer to lap the pack is crowned “lead jammer” and given the authority to stop a jam before two minutes is up.
After the lead jammer completes their initial lap, each team’s jammer scores a point for every defensive player they pass.
Got it?
I’m not sure it matters, in all honesty, because here’s all you really need to know:
It’s a blast — for the competitors, and those in the stands, whether they understand the nuances of the game or not.
“It’s a full-contact sport,” Koreishi said. “I love the confidence and strength that it helps me to find in myself, and the sense of humility, because what we do is hard.”
Like many of her teammates, Koreishi’s roller derby journey started by chance.
She picked up a Dockyard flier at a local arts festival her first summer in Tacoma, she told me.
Soon, she was attending practices and competing, dusting off skating skills she hadn’t used since she was a child going to birthday parties.
“I guess age was sort of impetus for it. A friend of mine had been into (roller derby) for years, and just peripherally, I always thought, ‘Oh, I would love that,” said Koreishi, now a seasoned roller derby vet and an Undertow team captain.
“I grabbed that little flier and said, ‘You know, if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it.’ So I signed up,” she continued. “I really missed team sports. As an adult, that’s very difficult to come across. Just the culture, the camaraderie, the atmosphere. … I loved it.”
Koreishi is confident others will feel similarly if they take the plunge. With the next bout quickly approaching this week, she strongly encouraged anyone who’s curious — and she meant anyone — to give roller derby a chance, as a player or spectator.
Mostly, though she’s itching to get back on the Dockyard Roller Derby home track, she told me, for the first time in a long time.
“It has taken a while, but now we’re in a place where we can all come together,” Koreishi said.
“I can’t wait.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
